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Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

theatlantic.com

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Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#111

Post by hmd_imputer »

shp0ngle wrote: post #104
hmd_imputer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the lack of strict regulations is one of the reasons start-up businesses flourish in the US. Although I am pro-regulation in some issues, I think that European style pain-in-the-ass regulations only hinder technological advancement. Would UBER ever be successful in Europe? Nope.

...uber is successful in Europe. There are cities that banned it, but there are as many that didn't. Conversely, Uber is not very successful in South-East Asia, but not for the abundance of regulation but for the lack of it - Grab, a local copy-paste of Uber, has become so dominant that Uber had to leave most of the markets there

yeap, the ones who didn't ban are the ones who didn't apply all these useless strict regulations.

In Germany, it is still not possible to take an Uber ride, for example. Besides, if it started in Europe as a small start-up it would be killed right away with tons of regulations anyways. So the only reason that you have Uber in Europe is that it has become a giant company in the US, due fertile environment, and thus could afford all these legal battles to enter the market.

South-East Asia is a different story. It has nothing to do with regulations at all. It is just a completely different mindset there. The fact is though, businesses in those countries can easily flourish as well.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#113

Post by weber111 »

joosters wrote: post #92
lajhsdfkl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I challenge you to find just one example of land that has been repurposed from parking spaces into something else, because of Bird or some other scooter company. These companies have existed for how long? The point is that if more and more people switch from using cars to using alternative transportation options we may move away from being a car centric society.

These companies have existed for how long? It was you who chose it as a measure of success for the company! It'd be difficult to find any examples even if the scope was widened to include bike hire schemes, which have been around for almost a decade. I agree that it'd be great if we could switch from using cars, however I'm not sure that scooter hire companies are the way to do this. Wouldn't it be better and less wa…

> Wouldn't it be better and less wasteful if people owned scooters?

Isn't the, well, _whole point_ of the sharing economy to reduce waste by not having everyone own things they only use some of the time?

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#114

Post by hmd_imputer »

hmd_imputer wrote: post #102
piokoch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it legal in US to use electricity at home for business purposes? In some countries that's against contract with electricity provider, as they have different tariffs for business.

the lack of strict regulations is one of the reasons start-up businesses flourish in the US. Although I am pro-regulation in some issues, I think that European style pain-in-the-ass regulations only hinder technological advancement. Would UBER ever be successful in Europe? Nope.

Here is a nice vlog on how Europe lost its tech companies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSU5MFPn6Zk

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#115

Post by aembleton »

bschwindHN wrote: post #84

Wouldn't it make more sense to make the batteries replaceable? Just have them locked in place until a "charger" person authenticates through the app, then allow them to swap in a fresh one. At that point transport would be reduced to just moving the batteries around instead of the whole scooter. They could still be charged at home. People might steal them but the article already mentions that some people steal them a…

It would but that would require custom designed scooters. These are Xiaomi M365 with some additional electronics - https://www.gearbest.com/skateboard/pp_596618.html

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#116

Post by adam-a »

dalbasal wrote: post #80

Dunno about the way charging works, at least long term. Scooter sharing through, that's kind of promising. Beijing (and other cities) have proven that bike sharing can become a major transport type if the city will allow bike sharing companies to just dump bikes all over the sidewalk. It's crude, but it at least let's us see how far bike sharing can go if/when stations are a non-problem. Besides the mess (I could not…

I could see them in amsterdam, the place is covered in bikes and bike lanes and these type of scooters could easily mix in with that. They travel at a similar speed and can be left against some railings (or dumped in a canal) just like a bike can.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#117

Post by chriswarbo »

gambiting wrote: post #77
isostatic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Does electricity used by cars have more externalities than electricity used by a washing machine?

No, but at the moment(at least over here in UK) the tax on petrol and diesel covers road building/maintenance for the entire country. With this tax slowly disappearing, we will have to find another way to tax people who use the roads, and the best way to do that is to tax the fuel they use as it's directly proportional to their use. Same reason why heating/farming oil doesn't have this tax, even though it's technical…

This is kind of a perverse incentive though:

- Discourage "bad" thing (driving, drinking, smoking, sugar, ...) by applying heavy taxes

- Occurrence of that thing goes down

- Complain about falling of tax revenue

I'm generally in favour of applying taxes like this, but they need to be based on the actual harm/externalities, and be targetted effectively. Taxing electricity-used-for-vehicles seems easy to game, and only indirectly related to harm. It might be more effective to tax fossil fuels, both for transport and electricity generation, due to their environmental problems; and tax ownership of vehicles to cover expenses (infrastructure, medical care, ...) and discourage excessive use (reducing fatalities, etc.). We have car tax for the latter; perhaps it could be made proportional to use by checking odometers during MOT? (Although it's currently perfectly legal to alter odometers, as long as it's not used to defraud someone when selling the vehicle)

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#118

Post by bigiain »

makomk wrote: post #89
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your calculation is completely off. 150 min * 0.15 $/min = $22.50. In the US you can get a kWh for about 12 cents. That means you can get 187.5 kWh. The largest Tesla Model S has a 100 kWh. I don't know what kind of battery these scooters have, but I am sure it's not nearly as big as a Tesla battery.

The electricity costs aren't the problem, the big cost here is paying people to collect the scooters up and charge them. As the article points out the cost of electricity makes up such a tiny amount of this cost that it's not even worth calculating.

There's another important task they do though - they collect them up from random locations, charge them, and then drop them off at pre determined locations, "nests".

I reckon the bicycle ride rental (no it's not "sharing"!) companies would be less hated here if they had a crew of teenagers making good pocket money returning all the out-of-the-way (mostly at-the-bottom-of-hills) bikes to locations where people expected/wanted to rent them...

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#119

Post by Shivetya »

lordnacho wrote: post #17

I want to hear more about Bird's business model. How can it be worthwhile for them to give hundreds of dollars out to have the scooters charged? What do people pay for using the scooters? As per the article, it also seems incentives are not quite thought out yet, so people can grab the $20 "hard-to-find" fee reasonably easily. It sounds like you can have a friend stash them until the fee goes up, then go and collect…

There are all sorts of costs here and risks. How much is Bird paying per scooter? Each charger? I have not gone through the sign up process? Are you on the hook for the chargers or does Bird just send them out and hope for the best?

Besides the obvious strife between fellow "chargers" it won't be long before cities get into the act and pass ordinances or enforce them to take them off the streets until they get their share as well. Figure that a whole licensing scheme will pop up and eventually be used to squeeze out smaller competitors who try to get into this arena

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